


The Slow Knife

by ScreamQueenBee (screamqueenbee)



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Red Hood and the Outlaws
Genre: What if Fic?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-28
Updated: 2012-09-28
Packaged: 2017-11-15 05:25:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/523636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/screamqueenbee/pseuds/ScreamQueenBee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p> A boy, a knife, and a few words.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Slow Knife

**Author's Note:**

> Heavily influenced by Talia's "Slow Knife" Speech.

Bruce must’ve had a pretty grueling patrol because he didn’t notice the weight moving across the bed. Didn’t even shift or toss around like Jason knew him to do when he had been Robin. That surprised him, Jason had grown considerably since he died and Bruce had been know to wake up at the sound of Jason opening his window for a cigarette. But no, Bruce slept soundly on, blissfully unaware of that his ending was nigh and it would come at the hand of his greatest failure. 

Both Ducra and Talia had said something to him once about this very moment.

Ducra had said to him that she hoped it would bring peace to his heart and snarkily added that she hoped he didn’t think he could do the same to her because she’d kick his ass six ways to Tuesday if he even tried. That had made him smile. Of all his mentors, Ducra was the one who had taught him the most about himself. It was true that he’d always been a fighter, then Bruce turned him into a soldier who fought for some abstract ideal under a symbol to be universally feared, Talia’s teachers had made him an efficient killer, calculating and cruel. But Ducra, well, that old lady had changed him into a warrior. She knew he needed this, but she didn’t agree with it.

 Talia had been more selfish in her words, words that fueled his anger towards everything his former mentor stood for. She wanted him to do this for himself. _The slow knife,_ she had called him… _The knife that takes its time, the knife that waits years without forgetting, then slips quietly between the bones. That’s the knife that cuts deepest._ He was _her_ slow knife sometimes.

 The ex-Robin smirked as he threw a leg over the older man’s chest and drew his keris from his belt, placing the point of the blade against the heart.

“Boss, it’s time to wake up.” He said quietly close to his ear and the body underneath him started awake. He watched as several expressions flit across the tired face until it finally settled into one of shock. “There we are.”

“Jason?” He knew that he must’ve looked like a ghost, dressed in layers of grey and washed-out by the moonlight coming in through the windows. Probably didn’t even know he was alive and kicking by the way Bruce said his name. Even reached out to touch him…

It was quick, much quicker than Jason had anticipated. Reactionary. The keris driven through skin and muscle and air, through the throat that had sheltered him with such kind a poisonous words like _Robin_ and _son_ and _soldier._ Bruce’s eyes bulged in surprise, hands fluttering to stem the flow that ran down his neck and staining the white sheets underneath him. The younger man pulled the blade out and slid off the bed. The only sound in the room was the gagging and gurgling and rasping coming from Bruce.

“Jay.. Ja…”

 The slow knife turned out to be a quick one instead, and one from which the Bat would never recover.


End file.
